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Bosnia-Herzegovina 




The U.S. Army's Role in 
Peace Enforcement Operations 

1995-2004 














Cover 


Supporting Operation Joint Endeavor, a 1st Armored Division’s Abrams 
tank moves into Bosnia-Herzegovina in late December 1995. 


CMH Pub 70-97-1 


LC Control Number 



2005 452181 


For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office 
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; DC area (202) 512-1800 
Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001 


ISBN 0-1 6-072516-X 


Vl I HI lb 92.7 






















Introduction 




Bosnia-Herzegovina was the scene for the most violent armed 
conflict in Europe since World War II. The collapse of the Berlin 
Wall in 1989 marked the end of the Soviet Empire and its forc¬ 
ible control of Eastern Europe. Even as the Soviet Union was 
breaking apart and its satellite states were shedding the vestiges 
of Communist rule, the nonaligned Socialist Federal Republic of 
Yugoslavia also showed cracks in its national structure. Comprised 
of six ‘republics’’ and two autonomous regions, Yugoslavia had cre¬ 
ated a favorable impression throughout the world as a model state 
with diverse ethnic groups. In spite of a historical legacy of ethnic 
conflicts, the country of the “South Slavs” could claim over forty 
years of peace and harmony.This way of life, however, changed in 
the last decade of the twentieth century. 

In a complex series of diplomatic and political maneuvers, four 
of the six republics—Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and 
Macedonia—separated from Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1992. 
Each secession was contested, with the most horrific destruction 
and violence occurring in centrally located Bosnia-Herzegovina. 
At least half of the entire population—more than two million 
people—was directly affected by a civil war that lasted from 
April 1992 to November 1995. Efforts by the United Nations and 
the European Union were ignored, cease-fires were not honored, 
civilians were massacred, and entire villages were destroyed. The 
ethnic cleansing that ravaged the country defied any semblance of 
restraint or responsibility. 

Spurred by U.S. leadership, a peace agreement was signed in 
December 1995 authorizing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization 
(NATO) to intervene. As called for in the agreement, the NATO 
Implementation Force consisting of 60,000 military personnel, 
one-third of them American, was to enforce the peace and to facili¬ 
tate the reconstruction of the country. To this end, a total of three 
successive peace enforcement operations were undertaken: Joint 
Endeavor, Joint Guard, and Joint Forge. 

Thousands of pages already have been printed about the civil 
war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This brochure, written by R. Cody 


Phillips of the U.S. Army Center of Military History, is not a com¬ 
plete picture of the course of events in that war-torn country, but 
it will provide the reader with an understanding of the U.S. Army’s 
role and scope of activities in Operations Joint Endeavor, Joint 
Guard, and Joint Forge. I hope this absorbing account, with its list 
of further readings, will stimulate additional study and reflection. 


JOHN S. BROWN 
Brigadier General, USA (Ret.) 
Chief of Military History 


Bosnia-Herzegovina 

The U.S.Army’s Role in Peace Enforcement 
Operations, 1995-2004 


Civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina erupted in April 1992. Over the 
next three and a half years between 140,000 and 250,000 people had 
been killed. At least four out of every live deaths were noncombatants. 
While an unknown number had been wounded or maimed—many 
from the thousands of land mines that saturated the country—the hor¬ 
ror did not stop there. Perhaps as many as 12,000 women were raped, 
and 520,000 Bosnians found themselves homeless. Ethnic cleansing 
created over 1.3 million refugees, many of whom had fled to other 
countries or were trying desperately to escape the lighting and pov¬ 
erty that engulfed the region. Dozens of diplomatic initiatives and tem¬ 
porary truces failed before a U.S.-brokered agreement in late 1995, the 
Dayton Peace Accords, finally ended the lighting and permitted U.S. 
military forces to enter the country as part of the North Atlantic Treaty 
Organization (NATO) international force charged with the responsibil¬ 
ity of enforcing the peace. 

Sadly, by 1998, three years after the lighting had ended officially, 
seemingly irreconcilable differences still characterized the former war¬ 
ring factions. While accompanying a small patrol in a multiethnic area 
near Brcko, a battalion command sergeant major encountered a young 
Bosnian Serb who—with all the candor and innocence of liis twelve 
years—asked “when the Americans were going to leave” so that he and 
his friends “could start killing each other again.” It was a stark reminder 
of the critical importance of the U.S. Army in Bosnia-Herzegovina and 
what made the Army’s mission so vital, yet so difficult, in the ensuing 
peace enforcement operations Joint Endeavor, Joint Guard, and Joint 
Forge. 


Strategic Setting 

Bosnia is located in the southeastern region of Europe com¬ 
monly referred to as the Balkans.includes 
the large medieval duchy of Hofl$$t)vina, is shgKf^la^ger than 


MC29.2C05 

I? 4NSFER 



Map 1 











the state of Tennessee. Prior 
to the outbreak of civil war 
in 1992 Bosnia-Herzegovina 
was one of six republics that 
formed the larger nation of 
Yugoslavia (Map 7), and only 
eight years earlier its capi¬ 
tal, Sarajevo, was the site for 
the 1984 Winter Olympics. 
Prewar images of Bosnia 
usually depict either pictur¬ 
esque rural settings reminis¬ 
cent of late-nineteenth cen¬ 
tury Europe or cosmopoli¬ 
tan multiethnic towns that 
reflect a blend of Turkish and 
European history. 

Notwithstanding the 
pastoral images and pacific 
urbanity of prewar Bosnia, 
the region had a turbulent 
history that dated as far back 
as the first century. The thir¬ 
teenth-century Great Schism 
that formally separated 
Roman Catholic Christianity 
and Eastern Orthodox 
Christianity increased ten¬ 
sions in the region as both 
churches, relying respectively 
on monarchs in the West and 
the Byzantine emperor in the 
East, attempted to extend 
their influence over and con¬ 
trol of the Balkans. A fledgling 
Bosnian kingdom appeared 
in the fourteenth century, 
but it barely survived one 
hundred years before being 
overwhelmed by the Turkish 
Ottoman Empire. For the next 
four hundred years Bosnia 


7 





was a province of the Muslim rulers in Istanbul, and many Bosnians 
converted to Islam. During the Turkish dominance of the Balkan 
region significant numbers of ethnic nationals migrated to neighboring 
lands, forming minority enclaves. Migrants from Serbia tended to form 
the largest of this group in Bosnia and Croatia. Folio wing a Russian 
campaign in the Balkans and the subsequent defeat of the Turks, the 
Congress of Berlin in 1878 placed Bosnia-Herzegovina under the 
control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.This action frustrated Russian 
ambitions in the Balkans and failed to consider the nationalistic aspira¬ 
tions of the indigenous population. In Bosnia the populace tended to 
align by its ethnic and religious allegiances, with Slovenes and Croats 
associating with the Catholic West (usually Italy and Austria), Serbs 
identifying with the Russians and the Orthodox East, and Bosnian 
Muslims favoring the Islamic Turks. Although tension existed among 
these ethnic groups, their greater concern was to be freed of the domi¬ 
nating influence of the imperial powers that surrounded them. The 
Austrian mandate triggered a Bosnian Muslim revolt that was ruthlessly 
suppressed—150,000 Bosnians died. A Serbian rebellion followed, and 
this too was put down. These two Balkan uprisings on the eve of World 
War I effectively neutralized further Turkish influence in the Balkans, as 
well as led to a larger and more aggressive Serbia.The assassination of 
the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne by a Bosnian Serb—a Serbian 
nationalist who resided in Austrian-occupied Bosnia—sparked the 
outbreak of World War I. Serbia, allied with Russia, valiantly fought 
the Austrians in a conflict that saw almost half of the young males 
in Serbia killed or wounded. The end of the war and the breakup 
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire brought about the arbitrary unifi¬ 
cation of the Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, and other ethnic minorities 
in the region under a conglomerate kingdom to be known as 
Yugoslavia (meaning South Slavs). 

A depressed economy, ethnic tensions, and both external and 
internal political intrigue made the young Kingdom of Yugoslavia 
a fragile entity even before the outbreak of World War II. German 
forces occupied Yugoslavia in April 1941, and the ensuing occupa¬ 
tion acerbated the divisions within the fledgling nation. The two 
leading Yugoslavian partisan forces, ostensibly organized to fight 
the Germans, spent inordinate time and resources fighting each 
other. Other ethnic groups affiliated with the Germans or their 
Italian allies and often fought against their partisan countrymen. 
By 1945 an estimated 1.7 million Yugoslavians had been killed in 
the internecine strife, representing over 11 percent of the prewar 
population. 


8 


Despite this incredible loss of life and significant damage to the 
country’s infrastructure, people rallied to a new and reconstructed 
Yugoslavia—this one organized as a socialist federal republic 
under President Tito (Josip Broz). For thirty-five years Tito’s firm 
control over the polyglot state subordinated ethnic rivalries to a 
pan-Yugoslavian ethos. Although ethnic enclaves remained scat¬ 
tered throughout the country, particularly in the republics of 
Croatia and Bosnia, there was free and unrestricted movement 
among the population. Within Bosnia, ethnic Croats and Serbs 
often formed small majorities in the countryside and villages, with 
the former usually found in the western and southern sections 
and the latter customarily living in the northern and eastern parts. 
Bosnian Muslims tended to dominate the large towns and cities. 
Mixed marriages became relatively common. By the late 1980s 30 
percent of the marriages in the urban communities of Bosnia were 
among couples of different ethnic backgrounds. Indeed, especially 
in larger towns and cities in Bosnia, it was not uncommon to find 
Croatians, Muslims, and Serbs all working in the same factory, 
attending the same school, or living on the same street. In fact, 
Bosnia’s multiethnic heritage was one of its most prominent char¬ 
acteristics. By 1990 ethnic Croats could be found living through¬ 
out roughly 70 percent of the state, while Bosnian Muslims and 
Bosnian Serbs—usually intermingled in communities—occupied 
almost 95 percent of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Population estimates at 
the time indicated that Muslims comprised over 44 percent, and 
still increasing; Serbs, slightly more than 31 percent; and ethnic 
Croats, 17 percent. 

Tito died in 1980, with Yugoslavia remaining under Communist 
rule for another ten years. However, the collapse of communism 
throughout Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet 
Union had a profound effect on the country’s future. As the 
Communist Party lost its grip on the Balkan country, the individual 
republics began to assert more control over their internal affairs. 
Concerned that growing Serbian influence in Yugoslavia might 
affect their autonomy, the republics began to seriously consider 
independence. Slovenia, the northernmost republic, was the first 
to separate in June 1991. A perfunctory week-long “war ” followed, 
during which the Yugoslav Army tried to reassert national author¬ 
ity in the region. The almost bloodless conflict quickly ended, and 
the Yugoslav government accepted Slovene independence. 

Very few ethnic Serbs resided in Slovenia, and this situation 
influenced the Serbian leadership in Belgrade to accept Slovene 


9 


secession. In the case of neighboring Croatia, however, where 
rising Croatian patriotism clashed with local Serbian nationalists, 
the response was different. When several attempts to achieve a 
political resolution failed, armed conflict erupted in August 1991 
and continued intermittently for the next four years. During the 
struggle ethnic Serbs residing in Croatia, aided by elements of 
the Yugoslav Army, seized large tracts of land and held them until 
Croatia forcibly reclaimed the lost territory in 1995. 

In an effort to stem the fighting in Croatia, the United Nations 
(UN) imposed an arms embargo on all the republics of Yugoslavia 
in September 1991. The following year the United Nations 
Protection Force (UNPROFOR), created in April 1992 as the UN’s 
second largest peacekeeping contingent, arrived to enforce a 
cease-fire among the combatants, but the events were moving too 
rapidly for the UN to control. The force never exceeded 10,000 
personnel scattered through Bosnia and Croatia. As one observer 
later noted, “UNPROFOR was an army . . . without a clear mission, 
and almost powerless in the middle of a mess.” 

Once the European countries recognized the independence of 
Slovenia and Croatia in January 1992, Bosnian leaders realized that 
they too could achieve independence—if only to avoid being dom¬ 
inated by neighboring Serbia. In March, in a referendum that was 
boycotted by the Bosnian Serb minority, an overwhelming majority 
of the voters chose to separate from Yugoslavia. Recognizing that 
implementation of this electoral decision might lead to conflicts 
similar to those that already had occurred in Slovenia and Croatia, 
the Bosnian political leadership tried to reach a political resolu¬ 
tion with the Yugoslav government in Belgrade. But the Bosnian 
Serb minority proved adamantly opposed to such an initiative. On 
the afternoon of 6 April a “peace and unity” demonstration in the 
Bosnian capital of Sarajevo was disrupted when Bosnian Serbs 
fired shots into the crowd and killed several demonstrators. The 
violence marked the beginning of civil war in Bosnia. 

Armed largely with weapons received from the Yugoslav Army, 
Bosnian Serbs seized parts of Bosnia and expelled the non-Serbian 
population of ethnic Croats and Muslims. Families that delayed 
their departure or resisted often were killed or had their homes 
and property destroyed. The central government in Sarajevo was 
slow to respond to these initial outrages, and the Bosnian Serbs 
quickly created their own country, the Republika Srpska (Serb 
Republic), out of the territory carved from Bosnia. At the same 
time, the UN Security Council extended the UNPROFOR mandate 


10 


to include Bosnia-Herzegovina. Momentum was with the Bosnian 
Serbs, who aggressively prosecuted the war relying on overwhelm¬ 
ing firepower, Yugoslav Army assistance, and the fear instilled in 
other minorities. 

Sarajevo was quickly surrounded, and eventually Bosnian Serb 
forces occupied nearly 70 percent of the country. In a wave of 
ethnic cleansing not seen in Europe since World War II hundreds 
of thousands of civilians were forcibly removed from their homes, 
and thousands more were killed. Repeated UN and European 
attempts to establish and maintain a cease-fire or negotiate an end 
to the hostilities failed. When the UN secretary general arrived 
in Sarajevo for a high-profile visit and promotion of a new peace 
initiative in early 1993, protestors greeted him with placards that 
read: “Stop defending us your way. We are getting exterminated.” 
By 1994 reports of mass murders and rapes, incredible property 
damage, and a surging refugee population were shocking testimo¬ 
nies to the unsuccessful political and diplomatic efforts to end this 
civil war. 

U.S. policy had initially favored the survival of Yugoslavia as 
a unitary state. Looking at the rapid dissolution of the former 
Soviet Union and its attendant problems with multiple fledgling 
states, U.S. leaders feared that a similar situation would destabi¬ 
lize the Balkans. At first, however, they were content to allow the 
European Community to handle the deteriorating situation. This 
would be “the hour of Europe.” 

American hopes for a continental solution proved unrealis¬ 
tic. The European Community—soon to become the European 
Union—could not reach a consensus on the appropriate course of 
action. Deferring to the UN to exercise oversight for protecting the 
civilian population and negotiating a peaceful resolution appeared 
to be the only solution, but UNPROFOR had proven too small and 
lightly armed for the tasks. Moreover, its exceedingly restrictive 
rules of engagement and cumbersome command structure had 
prevented UN peacekeepers from stopping even the most egre¬ 
gious acts of violence. In some cases UNPROFOR commanders 
were bullied into silence or retreat, and some UNPROFOR detach¬ 
ments even became hostages when the European Union attempt¬ 
ed to take more forceful action. 

Paralyzed with fears of an escalating conflict and frustrated 
by repeated failures to stem the fighting, UNPROFOR allowed the 
war in Bosnia to rage for three years. In the end, the peacekeeping 
force was barely able to defend itself and protect the humanitar- 


11 


ian relief coming into the country. Further dampening any enthu¬ 
siasm for a more robust response were NATO s estimates that 
somewhere between 150,000 and 460,000 military personnel, at 
least half to be American, would be necessary to stop the war and 
reverse all Bosnian Serb gains. 

As the war in Bosnia ground on through 1993 and 1994, a vari¬ 
ety of issues complicated any effective U.S. response to the unfold¬ 
ing tragedy. The possibility of a massive American military presence 
in south-central Europe seemed reminiscent of what had occurred 
a generation earlier in Southeast Asia. More recently, the tragic 
losses of special operations soldiers in Somalia tempered com¬ 
mitting others to a conflict with blurred front lines, an imprecise 
mission, and an uncertain enemy. The European Union insisted on 
pursuing diplomatic solutions, unless the United States was willing 
to commit military force on the ground—a course of action that 
neither the American public nor Congress was eager to support. 
Less significant, but troubling nonetheless, Muslim fundamentalists 
from the Middle East—mujahideen—had infiltrated Bosnia to add 
a new mix to the increasingly confused contest. Bosnia was, in the 
words of U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, “the problem 
from hell.” 

The United States and the European Union—particularly the 
United Kingdom and France—could not agree on a uniform policy 
and resolution to the crisis in Bosnia, creating a severe strain on 
the NATO alliance. A significant portion of the UNPROFOR person¬ 
nel came from NATO’s European Union members. Although they 
were anxious for the fighting in the Balkans to stop, they were 
reluctant to engage in any activity that might jeopardize their sol¬ 
diers already in the region. Conversely, the United States, with no 
military personnel at the time in Bosnia, advocated more forceful 
military responses to Serbian provocations.The U.S. position came 
to be characterized as “lift and strike”: lift the UN arms embargo 
on Bosnia, and use NATO airpower to enforce the no-fly zone 
over the country and launch punitive strikes against Bosnian Serb 
military targets.The UN, which asserted a military presence in the 
area through its protection force, did not have aircraft to enforce 
the no-fly zone over Bosnia, so it accepted the offer of NATO air¬ 
craft to perform this task. But the heavily layered and cautious UN 
command insisted on retaining final approval for all NATO combat 
flights over Bosnia. 

Initially, U.S. policy settled on a middle course of easing the 
tensions in the NATO alliance and using aggressive diplomacy 


12 


to contain the war in Bosnia and preserve its territorial integ¬ 
rity. The effort was short-lived. In 1994 NATO launched limited air 
strikes, sardonically called “pinpricks,” but they did not stem the 
Bosnian Serb offensives.The first combat action in NATO’s history 
occurred in late February, when U.S. Air Force aircraft shot down 
four Bosnian Serb planes that violated the no-fly zone. Another 
action followed six weeks later on 10 April, when NATO aircraft 
engaged ground targets in retaliation for Bosnian Serb attacks on 
a UN safe area. But these isolated air strikes accomplished little. 
The cumbersome approval process mitigated both their effective¬ 
ness and timeliness, and the willingness of both Bosnian Serbs 
and Bosnian Muslims to use UN military personnel as hostages 
or human shields further complicated the use of NATO airpower. 
Worse still, the threat of NATO air strikes failed to prevent the hor¬ 
rific massacre of 8,000 Bosnian men and boys in Srebrenica in the 
summer of 1995. 

The court of world opinion already had been tilting against 
the Bosnian Serbs. The Srebrenica massacre ended all doubts. In 
the following weeks a rebuilt Croatian military launched a cam¬ 
paign to retake lost territory from Croatian and Bosnian Serbs. 
Concurrently, Croatian Bosnians, concentrated in central and west¬ 
ern Bosnia, and Bosnian Muslims formed a military alliance and 
initiated a counteroffensive against the Bosnian Serbs. In a series 
of battles throughout the summer the Bosnian Serbs lost large sec¬ 
tions of territory. In mid-August 1995 a special U.S. envoy and team 
began a series of negotiations among the heads of the different 
warring factions, with the intention of bringing about a cease-fire 
and a permanent peace in the area. Despite being pressed from 
all directions, the Bosnian Serbs were obdurate. When a Bosnian 
Serb artillery round fired into Sarajevo killed thirty-seven civilians 
and wounded eighty-five others, the UN command acquiesced to 
NATO’s insistence on a sustained air campaign against the Bosnian 
Serbs. 

On 30 August NATO launched Operation Deliberate Force. 
Over sixty NATO aircraft from eight countries, plus British and 
French artillery, hit preplanned targets scattered around Bosnia. 
Thereafter, sustained bombing began and continued until 20 
September, when Bosnian Serbs agreed to remove their heavy 
artillery from around besieged Sarajevo. The U.S. diplomatic initia¬ 
tive, the Croatian-Bosnian counteroffensive, and the aggressive 
air campaign all combined to bring the Serbians, Croatians, and 
Bosnian Muslims together for peace talks that were held at Wright- 


13 



Okucani 


Stavonski Brod 


Banja Luka 


Drvar 


MND (SW) 

BRITISH SECTOR 


Bugojno 


SARAJEVO 


MND (SE) 

FRENCH SECTO 


Jablanica 


Mostar 


Dubrovnik 


Doboi 


MND ( 

AMERICAN S 




BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA 

December 1995 


Serb 

Croat-Muslim 


Miles 


Kilometers 


Multinational Division (MND) Boundary 


Map 2 
































Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, 
Ohio. 

U.S. diplomats arranged a tenu- 
^ ous cease-fire among all the warring 
factions in October, on the eve of the 
Dayton peace talks. After three weeks 
of intense negotiations the repre¬ 
sentatives of the former warring fac¬ 
tions approved an agreement on 21 
November, which was subsequent¬ 
ly formalized in the formal General 
Framework Agreement for Peace in 
Paris on 14 December. Among its 
many provisions was the establish¬ 
ment of the NATO Implementation 
Force (IFOR), which would include 
U.S. military personnel deployed to 
Bosnia-Herzegovina {Map 2) to facil¬ 
itate compliance with the Dayton 
Accords and to maintain the cease-fire. 

Defining the IFOR mission was 
not easy. The tasks required clear¬ 
ly specified limitations and specific 
objectives. Sensitive to the qualified 
congressional support and the vicis¬ 
situdes of public opinion, U.S. nego¬ 
tiators charted a careful course to 
avoid the ubiquitous ‘mission creep” 
that beleaguered the American expe¬ 
rience in Somalia and the open- 
ended U.S. involvement in Southeast 
Asia. Ultimately, IFOR was charged 
with several major tasks: enforce 
the cease-fire, control air space over 
Bosnia, separate the former warring 
factions, and supervise boundaries 
along zones of separation. Military 
movements would be monitored 
along key routes, and joint military 
commissions were to be formed as 
consultative bodies among all the 
parties to the peace agreement. Some 


15 
















of the UN forces already present in Bosnia would be transferred to 
IFOR; the rest were to be withdrawn. 

The 57,000 military members of IFOR, 20,000 of them 
Americans, were under NATO command. For operational pur¬ 
poses and for securing different areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina, 
NATO organized IFOR into three subordinate commands— 
Multinational Division (North), Multinational Division (Southwest), 
and Multinational Division (Southeast).The U.S. area of operations 
would be in Multinational Division (North)—MND (N). Within 
the American sector other nations supplying military person¬ 
nel included Turkey, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, 
Norway, Poland, and Sweden. Almost as an affirmation of the end of 
the Cold War, a Russian military force would also participate with 
the NATO forces in bringing peace to Bosnia. 

Preparations 

The U.S. military had a small presence in the region even prior 
to the official deployment of ground forces to Bosnia in December 
1995. Prior to the initial NATO air strikes on Bosnian Serb targets 
in 1994, U.S. Air Force and Army personnel were providing human¬ 
itarian aid in airlifts of food and other supplies to Croatia and 
Bosnia under the auspices of Operation Provide Promise, which 
had begun in July 1992. Five months later a mobile army surgical 
hospital deployed to Zagreb, Croatia. Originally there to support 
UN military personnel and relief agencies, it eventually treated 
over 6,000 civilian patients. Months later, British and U.S. special 
operations personnel quietly entered Bosnia to improve communi¬ 
cations capabilities among the UN forces and reconnoiter possible 
military targets. 

Planning for a possible deployment of U.S. Army ground forces 
to Bosnia began in April 1992 soon after the war started.That same 
year U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR) units started focusing their 
training on stability operations. The process became more delib¬ 
erate by the summer of 1994, when it appeared that UNPROFOR 
might be withdrawn because of the deteriorating situation in 
Bosnia. By that time USAREUR had prepared a draft operational 
plan and identified specific participating units, including up to 
nine combat brigades entering from multiple avenues to rescue 
the UN forces and stabilize the region. 

Among U.S. military personnel, such planning was neither a 
surprise nor much of a secret. As one platoon sergeant assigned to 


16 


USAREUR since 1993 had opined: “It’s always been one of those 
things—we’ve been training to come to Bosnia-Herzegovina for 
as long as I've been here.” Comparable training and preparations 
also occurred among Army Reserve units in the United States. By 
early summer of 1995 some kind of U.S.Army involvement seemed 
certain, and individual units began preparing for specific scenarios, 
particularly with stability operations training and exercises involv¬ 
ing multinational headquarters. In the words of one 1st Armored 
Division staff officer, “This thing just didn’t sneak up on us; we saw 
it coming a long way out.” 

Mission rehearsal exercises (MRE) began in June 1995, with 
over 1,000 USAREUR, U.S.Air Force Europe, and U.S. European 
Command (EUCOM) personnel participating in MRE Mountain 
Shield I.The MRE concept was designed to anticipate contingency 
operations in other regions of the world and integrate all training 
and exercises to compliment preparations for possible future mis¬ 
sions. MRE Mountain Shield II, held three months later, involved 
over 4,200 personnel and focused on a variety of operations in 
which a U.S. joint task force had the mission of extracting a UN 
protection force from a fictitious country. It was understood that 
Bosnia-Herzegovina was the country in question and that the 1st 
Armored Division would be the lead combat element for the mis¬ 
sion. With the imminent implementation of a cease-fire in Bosnia 
and the expected start of peace talks in Dayton, preparations for 
a deployment of Army personnel shifted into high gear. Leaves 
were canceled, and USAREUR received authorization from the 
Department of the Army to extend personnel in their present duty 
assignments while accelerating the arrival of newly assigned sol¬ 
diers in order to bring individual units up to full strength. 

MRE Mountain Eagle 95, which included over 10,000 person¬ 
nel from the 1st Armored Division and the V Corps, began on 12 
October and continued through most of November. In this multi¬ 
faceted exercise the projected scenario shifted so that units and 
individual personnel received training in peacekeeping opera¬ 
tions and negotiation techniques. The organizational element to 
be deployed in this contingency operation was designated Task 
Force Eagle, and every soldier within the task force was required 
to be trained and certified in five core categories: rules of engage¬ 
ment, mine awareness, negotiations, patrolling, and checkpoint 
operations. Additional training focused on stability and information 
operations, internal security and force protection measures, and 
working with joint military commissions. Several months later, as 


17 




his tour in Bosnia was concluding, a company commander reflect¬ 
ed on how well his unit had functioned and credited the success 
to the training done before the deployment: It was “right on the 
money,” which “really paid us big dividends.” 

In spite of all the training and preparation for a possible mis¬ 
sion in Bosnia-Herzegovina, significant problems appeared during 
the actual deployment—and most of them were either unpredict¬ 
able or beyond the control of military planners. Political decisions 
altered the anticipated flow of personnel and logistical support 
from bases in Germany to the Balkans and generally forced more 
combat forces into the theater of operations ahead of their requi¬ 
site support. This unbalance was complicated by an unexpected 
rail strike in neighboring France, which restricted the availability 
of railcars that were needed to transport major equipment items 
and bulk supplies. The reduction in transportation assets was 
further exacerbated by a paucity of storage facilities to pre-posi¬ 
tion supplies and equipment. Some deploying units were under¬ 
strength, which increased the workload for personnel in those 
organizations.Traversing non-NATO countries in a military deploy¬ 
ment and contending with the approach of the holiday season also 
complicated the movement to Bosnia. Just as Task Force Eagle was 
about to enter the war-torn country in force, the Balkan winter 
set in. Ice, snow, knee-deep mud, and swollen rivers added more 
delays to the deployment. 

To surmount several unforeseen problems, American soldiers 
adopted unusual solutions. When some commanders found them¬ 
selves separated from their units while reconnoitering staging 
areas and routes into Bosnia, they relied upon personal cell phones 
or other units to maintain contact with their own organizations. In 
another case transportation companies used credit cards to pay for 
fuel and lodging for the three-day 1,000-mile trip from Germany to 
the border of Bosnia. Looking over the variety of ad hoc and stop¬ 
gap solutions employed, one brigade commander concluded that 
the sheer determination and creativity of individual soldiers were 
key factors in completing the deployment. 

The most significant obstacle was crossing the Sava River. 
The longest watercourse in the former Yugoslavia, it constituted 
the northern border between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. 
December was regarded as a high-water period for the Sava, and 
Mother Nature truly challenged the Army engineers who began 
bridging the waterway on 20 December. Days later the river over¬ 
flowed its banks and flooded parts of the American camp, forcing 


18 


the engineers to suspend their work. By using all assets in theater 
to construct the largest pontoon bridge since World War II, com¬ 
manders of the lead units crossed the Sava on the twenty-ninth in 
a civilian ferry to reconnoiter what was to become the U.S. area 
ot operations MND (N). During the return trip, however, the ferry 
had mechanical difficulties, and portions of the pontoon bridge 
had to be dismantled during a snowstorm in order to extract the 
stranded Americans. But despite all difficulties, on the thirty-first, 
with the bridge finally completed, an M1A2 Abrams tank from the 
1st Armored Division s 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry, led the American 
contingent across the Sava River into Bosnia-Herzegovina for 
Operation Joint Endeavor. 

Operation Joint Endeavor 

Since the outbreak of civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the 
many cease-fires had been violated—sometimes within hours of 
being implemented. The legacy of numerous unprovoked attacks 
on UNPROFOR personnel also was troubling. Unsure how the 
former warring factions—Bosnian Serbs, Croatians, and Bosnian 
Muslims—might respond to the U.S. military presence, Task Force 
Eagle s intent was to demonstrate overwhelming power and 
resolve in order to discourage any hostile response. Columns of 
armored vehicles thundered down narrow dirt roads and doz¬ 
ens of attack helicopters flew overhead, all demonstrating that 
the present cease-fire would be enforced and the provisions of 
the Dayton Accords would be implemented. As one 1st Armored 
Division staff officer later observed, “The task force deployed with 
sufficient force to annihilate the factional armies. Clearly, this was 
instrumental in ensuring their full cooperation and compliance.” 

Officially, the deployment of U.S. forces began on 2 December 
1995 and concluded on 14 February 1996. By the time that the 
movement was completed, over 24,000 soldiers and 12,000 major 
equipment items had been moved in support of Operation Joint 
Endeavor. The heart of the U.S. contingent consisted of the 1st 
and 2d Brigades, 1st Armored Division (Chart), which included 
thirteen combat support and combat service support formations: 
the 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry; the 3d Battalion, 5th Cavalry; the 
4th Battalion (-), 67th Armor; the 2d Battalion, 3d Field Artillery; 
the 23d Engineer Battalion; the 501st Support Battalion; the 4th 
Battalion, 12th Infantry; the 2d Battalion (attached), 15th Infantry; 
the 2d Battalion (-), 68th Armor; the 3d Squadron (attached), 4th 


19 



Chart—Organization ofTask Force Eagle 



''Consisted of infantry, mechanized, military police, transportation, and engineer 
units from seven nations. 

Consisted of artillery, combat support, and combat service support units drawn 
mostly (but not exclusively) from the 1st Armored Division and spread between 
Bosnia and Hungary. 


Cavalry; the 4th Battalion, 29th Field Artillery; the 40th Engineer 
Battalion; and the 47th Support Battalion. Several smaller companies, 
batteries, and detachments of various units also were included in this 
force package. To keep the force levels within prescribed limits, the 
USAREUR (Forward) headquarters and major logistical facilities were 
positioned in neighboring Hungary and Croatia.The initial deployment 
required 409 trains and 7,340 railcars, 507 buses, 1,700 tractor-trailers, 
and 1,358 aircraft sorties. 

Despite thorough training and a deliberate approach to this peace 
enforcement operation, Task Force Eagle suffered its first casualty 
even before the main contingent was able to cross the Sava River into 
Bosnia. On 30 December a soldier from the 127th Military Police 
Company ran over an antitank mine with his vehicle and was seri¬ 
ously injured.'The MPs had been conducting a recomiaissance to mark 
the routes for the armored division to follow to its cantonments and 
checkpoints in Bosnia. The episode underscored the dangerous envi¬ 
ronment that U.S. forces soon would be occupying. 


20 






















Ten days earlier, on 20 December, the UN formally relinquished 
control to NATO. Leading the U.S.Army forces for Operation Joint 
Endeavor was V Corps commander Lt. Gen. John N. Abrams, dual- 
hatted as the deputy commanding general of USAREUR (Forward). 
The ground component commander for U.S. forces in Bosnia, 
Task Force Eagle, was 1st Armored Division commander Maj. Gen. 
William L. Nash, who situated his headquarters in the Bosnian city 
of Tuzla in the center of MND (N). Most of the UNPROFOR per¬ 
sonnel already in Bosnia simply changed their uniforms (usually 
the UN light blue helmet and armband to the soldier’s national 
uniform) and either relocated or remained in place as part of the 
new IFOR. Thus, the French forces shifted to the south, the British 
forces shifted to the west, the Russian and Turkish forces remained 
in the northeast area of Bosnia under the jurisdiction of the MND (N). 

The initial operational task was to separate the former war¬ 
ring factions into their respective areas and establish a zone of 
separation. By then, combat activity in MND (N) was largely static, 
with opposing forces fighting from fixed positions. Barbed wire 
entanglements around entrenchments, roadblocks, bunkers, and 
minefields saturated the area. Most of the buildings in and around 
the zone of separation had already been destroyed or extensively 
damaged. It was an austere environment, with one brigade com¬ 
mander affirming that the potholes were larger than the roads. 

Task Force Eagle quickly set about its peace enforcement mis¬ 
sion. After securing the former UNPROFOR cantonment sites as 
well as others, individual units began to assert their control over 
the region through checkpoints on roads and bridges and aggres¬ 
sive patrolling. The American soldiers found the former warring 
factions and the ethnic groups exhausted by three years of contin¬ 
uous bloodshed and the populace generally docile but most appre¬ 
ciative. In particular, those on patrol were offered small tokens of 
gratitude in the form of food and drink, but such gifts were usually 
declined for security reasons. 

A number of isolated and spontaneous incidents challenged 
the American soldiers, but the outcomes demonstrated both 
their restraint and the quality of their training and discipline. For 
instance, soon after starting on a routine patrol, an intoxicated 
civilian blocked a Bradley fighting vehicle and brandished two fire¬ 
arms, which he began firing wildly at the armored personnel car¬ 
rier. The vehicle commander simply closed his hatch and waited 
for the civilian to exhaust his ammunition, and then bystanders 
subdued him and carried him away. Random gunfire sometimes was 


21 



Typical U.S. Army checkpoint in Bosnia-Herzegovina 

directed at U.S. troops or equipment, but none of the shots hit the 
intended targets. Once a hand grenade was thrown at an armored vehi¬ 
cle, but it caused no damage. Other episodes occurred, for example, a 
rock or an empty bottle being hurled at a passing patrol, but they were 
few in number. As the weeks went by, patrol operations and check¬ 
points became a common activity performed by IFOR and casually 
observed by the local civilians. In time, fighting the tedium and staying 
alert weighed heavily on most of the U.S. forces in MDN (N). 

But all the former warring factions were not idle. Soon after U.S. 
troops in Task Force Eagle had established their checkpoints and 
settled into an expected routine, a two-truck convoy of Bosnian Serbs 
challenged an isolated outpost by trying to speed past the American 
guards. The first truck slipped past the checkpoint, but the second 
truck was stopped. The U.S. Army sergeant ordered the twenty-two 
armed Bosnian Serb soldiers out of the truck. In perfect English, one of 
the Serbs said: “I’ll kill you.” Calmly, the sergeant pointed his rifle at the 
speaker and replied/! don’t think you will,” and repeated his order. By 
then, the other four U.S. troops at the checkpoint arrived to guard the 
Bosnian Serbs, while the sergeant collected two-dozen firearms and 
ammunition. 

In another early incident a Task Force Eagle patrol observed a 
man carrying an automatic rifle inside the zone of separation.The 


22 
















patrol approached the individual to confiscate his weapon, but 
noted that several other armed personnel were in a nearby house 
watching the patrol. The patrol leader immediately radioed his 
headquarters, and within minutes several IFOR armored vehicles 
and a senior officer with interpreters arrived on the scene, while 
attack helicopters hovered in the distance. This synchronized tac¬ 
tical response to a potentially volatile situation was sufficient to 
permit all of the civilians to be disarmed peacefully. Then too, the 
generally decentralized troop distribution facilitated the quick con¬ 
centration of necessary force at trouble spots. 

Episodes like this were typical of the early phases of Operation 
Joint Endeavor. What made them especially sensitive and signifi¬ 
cant was the near-certainty that they could easily escalate and spin 
out of control. In a stability or peace enforcement operation, a 
successful mission was credited to commanders and their person¬ 
nel who did not have to resort to force of arms. Every nonlethal 
option to achieve a desired end was encouraged, while convincing 
the opposing force that implementation of overwhelming combat 
power was imminent. Of note, the small-unit leaders—noncommis¬ 
sioned and company-grade officers—were making these decisions. 

At least thirty patrols occurred every day, with three platoons 
on alert as a quick-reaction force that could be committed to 
respond to any exigency that might arise. On infrequent occasions 
gunfire would be exchanged between the former warring factions, 
for example, snipers firing across the zone of separation and then 
scampering away before U.S. troops or aircraft could arrive on the 
scene. In other cases civilians of one ethnic background might 
accidentally stray into a different ethnic area, and U.S. forces would 
be called in to rescue the hapless individuals. Each crisis had stra¬ 
tegic, operational, and tactical implications. In a world dominated 
by instant communications, any violent flare-up or any mistake 
could significantly affect national policies and the fate of the peace 
enforcement operation in Bosnia. 

More complex examples abounded and not all ended happily. 
The Dayton Accords clearly specified limitations on carrying arms 
within the zone of separation or crossing into another ethnic area 
without coordinating such movements through IFOR. Thus, when 
seven armed Bosnian Muslims found inside the borders of the Serb 
Republic tried to surrender to U.S. forces, they were disarmed 
and transferred to Bosnian Serb police, who believed that these 
men were responsible for the murder of some Bosnian Serbs a 
few days earlier. The men claimed to be survivors of the Serbian 


23 


massacre in Srebrenica, but the evidence was inconclusive. The 
action complied with treaty requirements, but the International 
Red Cross disputed the Army’s decision. General Nash immediately 
sent a senior officer to the Bosnian Serb police station, along with 
a small team of observers from the UN and the recently consti¬ 
tuted International Police Task Force (IPTF). Their stay was cut 
short when a hostile crowd gathered outside the station.The IPTF 
inspectors returned the following day, only to be denied access to 
the Muslim prisoners. The prisoners were transferred a few days 
later to another city 30 miles away, where another IPTF inspector 
was able to visit the Muslims and report that they had been severe¬ 
ly beaten and tortured. The final fate of the prisoners remained 
unknown to American authorities. 

Within the context of the larger operation, the episode was 
minor, but it also was characteristic of the problems surround¬ 
ing Operation Joint Endeavor. On any given day U.S. forces could 
encounter a variety of isolated and unrelated issues, and there was 
no predicting which ones might suddenly surface as an interna¬ 
tional incident. A sergeant or lieutenant at a remote checkpoint 
was fully aware of the potential ramifications of every decision 
that he made. 

Military authorities constantly worked at defusing poten¬ 
tial problems and ensuring proper civil-military coordination. 
Although zone-of-separation security was the most visible ele¬ 
ment of Task Force Eagle’s activities, commanders also engaged 
in political affairs and economic recovery. To improve the local 
economy and to encourage positive interchange among the indig¬ 
enous ethnic groups, one brigade commander created the Arizona 
Market—an open-air commercial enterprise for Bosnian Muslim 
and Bosnian Serb businesses. The joint military commissions 
demanded significant investments of time just to keep the former 
warring factions talking to each other. 

A recurring problem for the U.S. forces in Bosnia was the con¬ 
stant animosity between the ethnic and religious groups. Army 
personnel often noted the deliberate destruction of nonmilitary 
targets—such as private homes, churches, and mosques—that 
occurred during the war. So it came as no surprise that these ten¬ 
sions continued when, in accordance with the Dayton Accords, 
some Bosnian Muslims, or “Bosniacs,” tried to resettle in areas 
that they had occupied before the war began. One volatile epi¬ 
sode began in late April 1996 and continued through the follow¬ 
ing month. Muslim civilians crossed the zone of separation and 


24 


entered Bosnia Serb territory, with the intention of either visiting 
family grave sites or reoccupying their former homes. They had 
not gone far when armed Serbs met them. Shots were exchanged, 
with one Muslim killed. Some of the Muslim civilians panicked 
and ran through a marked minefield, where six were injured. A 
reinforced armored column from the 3d Squadron, 4th Cavalry, 
quickly arrived at the site before the situation could spin out of 
control. The U.S. soldiers disarmed the Serbians and escorted the 
Muslims out of Serb territory. In the following weeks additional 
weapons and munitions were confiscated from both ethnic groups 
as Muslims tried to enter the Serbian side of the zone of separation 
and Bosnian Serbs continued to block their efforts. 

The rapid and resolute response to this episode, as well as 
many like it, prevented such situations from spiraling into more 
serious problems. Sometimes, however, the operations were not so 
seamless. In November 1996 a company of American infantrymen, 
working with Russian paratroopers in MND (N), stopped a small 
group of Muslims from provoking neighboring Serbs, making the 
group leave the zone of separation near the burned-out village of 
Gajevi. But hours later as many as 600 Bosnian Muslims suddenly 
gathered and started moving toward Serb territory. Paramilitary 
Serbian forces quickly arrived to block their route of advance 
after some shots were fired at Serbian homes. Familiar with the 
now-predictable IFOR response to such provocations, this clearly 
was an orchestrated political event that was designed to attract 
media attention. In view of the planned rotation of U.S. forces, the 
incident also may have been prompted to exploit the temporary 
vacuum engendered by the change in forces and the concurrent 
changes of command. 

The Bosnian Muslims, claiming their right to resettle in their 
former homeland as formally acknowledged in the Dayton Accords, 
refused to leave. In response, the Serbian forces started to advance 
on the crowd, and the senior American commander warned them 
to halt or be shot. His action appeared to end the confrontation, 
with both sides eventually dispersing. Nevertheless, in the same 
region on 12 November, the Bosnian Serbs and Muslims exchanged 
random gunfire, resulting in the death of at least one Muslim. By 
now, IFOR personnel had determined that the Muslims were carry¬ 
ing weapons into the zone of separation and had an undocument¬ 
ed arsenal nearby. Two companies of tanks and armored personnel 
carriers, with trucks and support personnel, launched a predawn 
raid on the arsenal site and confiscated over 1,000 firearms. As they 


25 


were leaving, a hostile Muslim crowd gathered to block the American 
forces from withdrawing. When negotiations with the agitators failed, 
the task force commander tried various nonlethal means of dispersing 
the crowd. Nothing worked. Eventually, the U.S. soldiers disembarked 
from their vehicles and forced a path through the crowd for them¬ 
selves and their vehicles. Individual soldiers were kicked, punched, 
and spat on. When subjected to a flurry of rocks and debris, they raised 
their firearms and pointed them toward the pressing crowd, which 
immediately began to thin and disperse. Although there were no casu¬ 
alties, the incident highlighted how easily a situation could become 
uncontrollable and how tense the situation was—even after months of 
an enforced peace. 

It seemed that every military organization among the former 
warring factions maintained a weapons cache or small arsenal. 
One of the mandates for Task Force Eagle was to reduce the vol¬ 
ume of weaponry in MND (N), to concentrate what remained, 
and to conduct periodic inventories so that the collection neither 
increased nor decreased. It was a task that often engendered some 
tension between the U.S. forces and the ethnic military organiza¬ 
tion being inspected. 

Not every encounter with the general population of Bosnia 
was confrontational. Inventorying weapons caches, separating 
the former warring factions, and securing the zone of separation 
between them also included identifying and clearing thousands of 
minefields in the area. With the exception of maintaining check¬ 
points and aggressive patrolling throughout the area of operations, 
no other issue so dominated the concerns and actions of U.S. 
military personnel. Indeed, some military authorities regarded land 
mines as a greater threat to U.S. personnel than the former warring 
factions. Others regarded this situation as the most stressful aspect 
of the Bosnian experience: “You never know when somebody’s 
going to step on a mine.” 

Bosnia was peppered with at least thirty types of antitank and 
antipersonnel mines, which were responsible for nearly one-third of 
all UNPROFOR casualties. Both mine maps and signage were either 
incomplete or nonexistent, primarily because the inexperienced per¬ 
sonnel used to seed the fields with mines did not bother to plot what 
and where the devices were positioned. The situation became more 
complex as front lines shifted, and each opposing force laid new mine¬ 
fields or overlapped existing ones. Estimates made after three years 
of warfare suggested that more than 750,000 mines were in over 
30,000 areas. 


26 



Photographing Minefields, by Col. Gary N“Butch”Cassidy, 1998 

One Army engineer, who had arrived in Bosnia during the first 
week of Joint Endeavor, recalled that initially only four minefields 
were marked in MND (N) and that over the next three weeks he 
had identified 2,000 more in the same area. By the end of the first 
year in Bosnia, with over 4,000 minefields known and marked, 
Army personnel concluded that only half of all the mines in the 
American sector had been located. 


27 




















Siveeping fo r m i n es 


Predeployment training regarding mines and booby traps had 
been intense and thorough, but accidents still happened—often in 
a thoughtless or unguarded moment. A typical episode occurred 
when Army engineers accompanied a Bosnian Serb officer to 
investigate a mine explosion in an area that had been declared 
cleared of mines. As they approached the area, their Bradley 
vehicle struck an explosive device and was disabled. A lieutenant 
immediately jumped off the vehicle to investigate the damage, in 
the process detonating an antipersonnel mine; he was thrown into 
the air and landed on an antitank mine that, fortunately, failed to 
explode. In another incident, when a military vehicle traveling on 
a hard-surface road used daily struck an antitank mine, Army engi¬ 
neers learned that the former warring factions occasionally placed 


28 



















land mines under asphalt roads.The former warring factions knew 
this, and simply assumed that everyone else was familiar with the 
practice; IFOR personnel had to learn from experience. The les¬ 
sons from these episodes were inescapable.The danger was omni¬ 
present and could not be ignored. Extreme fluctuations in the tem¬ 
perature, snow and ice, and small alterations of the land surface 
could obscure the presence of land mines or cause some that had 
been dormant for years to become active. 

The former warring factions were responsible for removing 
the mines that they had planted. It was laborious work, often made 
more difficult because few minefields were marked and many had 
been created or enlarged by different military units and ethnic 
factions. IFOR monitored most of the mine-clearing operations, 
but this oversight proved problematic at times. For example, the 
former warring factions also contracted out mine-clearing tasks to 
nongovernmental organizations, and these agencies rarely reported 
the quantity or location of the mines that were removed. 

Besides these conventional explosives, Bosnia was littered 
with booby traps. These devices were usually located in the doors 
and windows of abandoned houses. Sometimes small explosives 
were placed inside innocuous objects, such as soda cans or paper 
bags, and left in public areas for passing civilians to pick up. One 
civilian was killed when the jacket that he retrieved from a road¬ 
side exploded.Though infrequent and few, these random incidents 
continued for years. As late as 1998 Task Force Eagle continued to 
encounter explosive devices secretly placed in homes, automo¬ 
biles, or public buildings. 

In addition to concerns over land mines and booby traps, IFOR 
personnel also contended with infrequent gunfire and explosions.The 
very random nature of a shot fired in the darkness of night or an explo¬ 
sive thrown from a speeding vehicle only increased tensions within 
communities and among soldiers. Eventually, occasional sniper fire 
became less common than the quickly hurled hand grenade, which 
was “the weapon of choice to settle disputes” among the ethnic fac¬ 
tions. And, even four years after the Dayton Accords had been imple¬ 
mented, such violent acts continued to occur. 

Although the former warring factions cooperated in identifying 
the locations of known minefields within the zone of separation, they 
were incapable of marking all of them. As an alternate resource, IFOR 
personnel soon learned that local farmers could be equally helpful 
because in some instances they had planted crops around and through 
such areas. Nevertheless, the rising number of deaths and the gradual 


29 



The experimental Panther used for mine-clearing operations 


influx of returning refugees forced Task Force Eagle personnel to con¬ 
duct mine-awareness classes for the indigenous population. Comic 
books were among the more popular instructional handouts used to 
warn children (and adults) about the dangers of land mines and how 
to recognize them. 

U.S. military personnel engaged in some mine-clearing opera¬ 
tions, relying upon mechanical methods, visual inspections, and 
dog teams. The principal proofing method was the experimental 
Panther, a remote-controlled armored vehicle with the chassis of 
an M60 tank. Equipped with two five-ton rollers, the vehicle sim¬ 
ply drove over areas with the intent of either detonating mines 
or certifying that none was present. As a “proofing vehicle,” it was 
effective. But this technique did not always work, and occasion¬ 
ally an area would have to be cleared again if a land mine were 
discovered or, more often, detonated. Military dog teams usually 
were less effective and were used sparingly before being returned 
to USAREUR. In many cases, however, the former warring factions 


30 









were responsible for clearing minefields from the zone of separa¬ 
tion, using their own military personnel or contractors. Yet given 
the slow pace of mine-clearing operations, the unstable nature of 
many mines, the unknown location of many minefields, and the 
shear volume of explosive devices, IFOR personnel calculated that it 
would take another twenty years before all the mines in Bosnia had 
been removed—“that’s if they don’t go out and emplace anymore,” 
opined one Army engineer. 

The ethnic animosity that afflicted so much of Bosnia-Herzegovina 
during these years remained profound. By July 1996 conditions in 
MND (N) seemed less tense, and some political observers speculat¬ 
ed that the peace enforcement operation might end later that year. 
But many others were less hopeful.That month, a young girl with a 
severe head wound was taken to a hospital in the Serb Republic of 
Bosnia. While in the operating room, the surgical staff learned that 
she was a Bosnian Muslim and had her removed from the hospi¬ 
tal. Struggling with her open wound, her family was able to move 
her to a U.S. medical facility, where an Army surgeon completed 
the operation. The little girl lived, but the episode punctuated the 
intense hostility that still existed and the near-certainty that the 
IFOR mission would not conclude anytime soon. 

The incident also underscored a recurring difficulty that 
beleaguered IFOR, particularly Task Force Eagle. The objective of 
this operation was peace enforcement—not humanitarian assis¬ 
tance or nation building. And yet, many civilians in Bosnia, as well 
as international relief agencies and nongovernmental organiza¬ 
tions, expected U.S. forces to engage in a variety of civic action 
activities, to include rebuilding schools, roads, and bridges, and 
providing food, clothing, and medical care. To be sure, Army civil 
affairs units engaged in such tasks, sometimes as a component 
of a larger mission requirement and sometimes on the initiative 
of an individual unit. For example, within the first ten months 
of Joint Endeavor, Task Force Eagle assisted the U.S. Agency for 
International Development with initiating 126 projects that cov¬ 
ered various reconstruction efforts and community improvements. 
Overall, civil affairs units coordinated or organized over 500 
reconstruction and relief projects throughout northeastern Bosnia. 
Several individual units also engaged in relief activities, usually 
distributing materials that were donated by soldiers or sent from 
community service organizations in the United States. A typical 
response was the donation of clothing and school supplies for 800 
orphans, which one unit historian regarded as “one of the most 


31 


important events of the year-long deployment.” But these efforts 
had to be balanced against IFOR’s larger security mission and 
portended the ubiquitous “mission creep” that had bedeviled U.S. 
forces in similar deployments. 

To meet IFOR’s requirement for safe travel roads, Army engi¬ 
neers repaired and opened for traffic more than half of the roads 
as well as over sixty bridges in Bosnia. Task Force Eagle staff offi¬ 
cers identified other minor reconstruction initiatives as training 
missions for engineers, and they often had them funded with 
materials donated by relief agencies or the local citizenry. Thus, 
many technicians and specialists provided assistance in restoring 
public utilities, upgrading communications, and even teaching 
classes; however, such tasks always were subject to other mission 
requirements. Notwithstanding the tandem pressures of American 
soldiers wanting to do more and local civilians and relief agencies 
expecting additional assistance, the United States and its NATO 
allies were not in a position to fund or staff many humanitarian 
tasks. Simply enforcing the Dayton Accords and the overall peace 
in the region kept IFOR’s plate full. 

Characteristic of the U.S. Army’s involvement in the internal 
affairs of Bosnia-Herzegovina was the increased security and lim¬ 
ited logistical support for national elections in September 1996. 
This task included a greater military visibility through conducting 
more patrols, guarding polling places, and escorting the delivery of 
ballots to and from polling places. Army civil affairs units worked 
closely with several government organizations to keep the elec¬ 
tions on schedule, despite the controversy over which contractor 
would supply ballot boxes: Serbs rejected a Turkish agency, Croats 
objected to a Greek company, and no one wanted firms from west¬ 
ern Europe. Eventually, the ballot boxes came from Taiwan. The 
elections themselves were successful, but produced no surprises 
and largely reaffirmed the intense ethnic and cultural divisions 
within the country. Nevertheless, the added security precautions 
and the past ten months of IFOR’s peace enforcement opera¬ 
tions seemed to have worked. In the words of one Army engineer: 
“Contrary [to] all expectations, the election was peaceful and boring.” 

Even before the Joint Endeavor deployment was completed, 
planning began for the relief force that would replace the 1st 
Armored Division in Bosnia.This force, comprising elements of the 
1st Infantry Division, was to be ready for deployment by the end 
of the year if the U.S. government decided to extend the IFOR mis¬ 
sion. Extending the mission was a delicate issue, and one that the 


32 


Army approached carefully. The president had promised Congress 
that U.S. forces would be in Bosnia for only one year, but it had 
become increasingly apparent that neither the IFOR tasks nor the 
provisions of the Dayton Accords would be fully accomplished 
before the end of that time period. An extension was almost cer¬ 
tain, but only the president had the formal authority to acknowl¬ 
edge this. But despite the uncertainty, specific training began in 
July with MRE Mountain Eagle III, which spanned three months 
and embraced two command post exercises, a field training exer¬ 
cise, and individual qualifications training. 

To ensure a seamless force reduction and redeployment, the 
Army ordered the 2d Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, to Bosnia as 
a covering force for the redeploying Army units. The first brigade 
elements began to arrive in October 1996. The term covering 
force was necessary at this time, because no public decision had 
been made about extending the U.S. mission into Bosnia. One 
month later, following the U.S. national elections in November, 
the president announced that the mission in Bosnia would be 
extended another eighteen months, and a resolution of the UN 
Security Council redesignated the Implementation Force as the 
Stabilization Force (SFOR). By then the 1st Infantry Division had 
assumed control of Task Force Eagle, with its 3d Brigade subse¬ 
quently relieving its 2d Brigade, and by the end of the year the 
Army had reduced its strength in Bosnia from around 18,300 to 
about 10,500 soldiers. In the latter half of 1997 the 2d Armored 
Cavalry deployed from the United States to relieve the 1st Infantry 
Division of its mission in Bosnia. But even after one year the job 
for Task Force Eagle would not become easier. 

Opera tion Joint Guard 

Operation Joint Guard officially replaced Operation Joint 
Endeavor on 20 December 1996, when the Implementation Force 
became the Stabilization Force. Having established a firm military 
presence for peace enforcement operations, the intent of the U.S. 
contingent within SFOR was to draw down its total force commit¬ 
ment in increments, eventually reaching a baseline of about 5,000 
American soldiers by the projected end of the SFOR mission in 
June 1998. Keeping a highly visible force in such a rugged country 
while progressively making it smaller was a Herculean feat for Task 
Force Eagle as it accomplished its assigned objectives and sus¬ 
tained its operational tempo. 


33 


The change in command brought a change in mission. Whereas 
the IFOR mission had been to implement the peace, the SFOR man¬ 
date was to stabilize the peace. IFOR had established and maintained 
the zone of separation, located and destroyed weapons systems, identi¬ 
fied minefields, and created safe travel routes. With a new and much 
smaller force deployed into the country, SFOR was to maintain the 
zone of separation, to monitor civilian movements, to oversee the 
removal of mines, and to inspect weapons sites. More civic action proj¬ 
ects and humanitarian assistance programs were also scheduled, including 
additional mine-awareness instruction for the civilian population. 

Early in Operation Joint Guard, as though to underscore the 
future tone of SFOR activities, Bosniac refugees attempted to reset¬ 
tle in a Bosnian Serb area not far from Brcko.The effort failed. An 
ethnic Serb mob attacked and severely injured one Bosniac who 
was trying to construct a prefabricated building, and other civil¬ 
ians were threatened. As a result, SFOR personnel had to remove 
the Muslims from the area to ensure their safety. The Bosnian Serbs 
burned the unoccupied buildings. The successes of Joint Endeavor 
had not altered the hearts and minds of the ethnic groups in 
Bosnia, particularly in such strategically sensitive areas as Brcko. 
This small town on the Sava River, seized by Bosnian Serbs early in 
the civil war, was the only land link that connected ethnic Serbs to 
the east and the west. 

The tensions between the ethnic groups thus remained and 
sometimes became violent. Random acts of vandalism and isolated 
outbursts of anger occurred without any identifiable pattern.These 
episodes usually included throwing stones at passing vehicles, 
breaking windows, or making obscene gestures to another ethnic 
group. Occasionally, however, more serious flare-ups occurred that 
involved direct responses from Task Force Eagle. 

The town of Brcko, which was strategically important to the 
Croats, Muslims, and Serbs, was an especially sensitive site in MND 
(N). Originally a multiethnic municipality, Bosnian Serbs early in the 
conflict had seized and fully “cleansed” the town and the Croats and 
Muslims at the end returned and reoccupied portions of it. U.S. forces 
were often called upon to quell disturbances, but in late August 1997 
a series of incidences escalated into full-scale rioting. Task Force Eagle 
eventually was able to control the situation, but only after two U.S. 
soldiers were seriously injured. As a result of this episode, and a con¬ 
current one south of the town, U.S. forces in Bosnia received nonlethal 
weaponry for riot-control situations and the appropriate training 
in their use. 


34 



Sentry at “Mud” Govern, by Col. Gary N.“Butch”Cassidy, 1998, 
depicts SFOR duty near Camp McGovern on the outskirts of Brcko. 







These public outbursts often had the support of ethnic lead¬ 
ers. The sponsoring government or a quasi-official government 
agency generally supplied transportation, usually buses, and 
occasionally even food and a small stipend to participants in a 
demonstration. For example, when radical Bosnian Serbs tried to 
inflame public sentiment in a series of radio broadcasts during 
August and September, U.S. military personnel attempted to seize 
the transmission towers. In response, several hundred Bosnian 
Serbs arrived at the sites in buses to thwart the U.S. forces. A 
favorite tactic of all the ethnic factions was the employment 
of large civilian groups—often called “rent-a-mobs” by NATO 
personnel. In this case, SFOR personnel were able to persuade 
the Serb authorities to tone down their rhetoric, and the crowd 
dispersed. When the Bosnian Serbs reneged on their promises 
weeks later,Task Force Eagle quickly returned in force.The pres¬ 
ence of armored vehicles in the predawn hour discouraged the 
armed guards at the transmission towers from resisting occupa¬ 
tion and neutralization of the communications facility, and the 
speed of movement did not allow sufficient time to organize and 
bus a mob to the site. 

Regrettably, SFOR could not respond to every exigency 
quickly or with sufficient force to prevent acts of violence. In 
one notable episode in the spring of 1998 Croatians suddenly 
massed in a border village that had been resettled by Bosnian 
Serbs. Several dozen residences and vehicles were burned or 
damaged. A Canadian unit in SFOR responded once the violence 
began, but it lacked sufficient force to overwhelm the Croatians. 
Although there were no fatalities, the incident underscored the 
fragile ethnic relations that still existed in the country. 

For the U.S. Army, the new stabilization mission had begun 
with a limited timetable as a contingency mission for USAREUR, 
with small supplements from other active Army and Army 
Reserve units and personnel. By the latter half of 1997, how¬ 
ever, it had become apparent that the U.S. mission in Bosnia- 
Herzegovina would be extended again and that it would become 
an Army-wide operation. Perhaps indicative of a probable exten¬ 
sion was a congressional appropriation for permanent billets 
to house almost 6,500 soldiers in that country. In December 
the president thus announced that U.S. troops would stay in 
Bosnia beyond the previously set departure of June 1998. Several 
months later, and viewed by many as demonstrable proof of a 
much longer U.S. military presence in Bosnia, a 10,000-square- 


36 


foot multiservice post exchange was opened at the main Army 
cantonment known as Camp Eagle. 

Operation Joint Forge 

Operation Joint Guard officially ended on 20 June 1998. 
The new military operation, Joint Forge, began at the same time, 
albeit as an open-ended commitment to support NATO and the 
peace enforcement task in Bosnia-Herzegovina. USAREUR contin¬ 
ued to serve as the Army service component command provid¬ 
ing oversight for the mission, but in the following years other 
major non-USAREUR organizations assumed the Task Force Eagle 
mission in Bosnia. Ranging from six- to twelve-month tours, 
these units included elements from the 1st Cavalry Division, 
the 10th Mountain Division, the 49th Armored Division of the 
Texas National Guard, the 3d Infantry Division, the 29th Infantry 
Division of the Virginia National Guard, the 25th Infantry Division, 
the 28th Infantry Division of the Pennsylvania National Guard, the 
35th Infantry Division of the Kansas National Guard, and the 38th 
Infantry Division of the Indiana National Guard. In January 2003 
MND (N) was redesignated Multinational Brigade (North), and the 
total U.S. troop commitment fell below 1,400 military personnel in 
the area of operations. 

Despite the reduced military profile, SFOR was kept busy by 
almost daily confiscations of weapons, routine patrols, and reac¬ 
tions to either ethnic clashes or tasks that fell within the purview of 
an expanding mission. The massive amount of munitions that contin¬ 
ued to be seized from unreported bunkers, hidden caches, and small 
improvised arsenals indicated that all three of the ethnic factions 
might simply be waiting for the peacekeepers to leave before restart¬ 
ing their civil war. To discourage the random acts of violence and van¬ 
dalism, quick-reaction teams provided security for public ceremonies 
and major transportation facilities. Mine-clearing operations among the 
former warring factions continued, and Task Force Eagle sponsored 
several civic action projects to rebuild the country’s infrastructure. 
Individual and unit training became routine, but served to reinforce 
the SFOR presence in Bosnia-Herzegovina. 

By late 2004 the entire U.S. Army personnel strength fell to less 
than 1,000 soldiers. Although the Stabilization Force was obviously 
becoming significantly smaller and assuming a much lower profile, 
its mission could not be eliminated. Even after nine years of peace 
enforcement operations, the conditions in Bosnia-Herzegovina posed 


37 


problems that defied a definitive military solution. The United States, 
its NATO allies, and several other contributing nations had successfully 
stopped the civil war, and the widespread killing, horrific destruction, 
and ethnic cleansing that had shattered the land a decade earlier were 
over. Roads could be repaired and buildings could be reconstructed. 
Yet the time when any semblance of ethnic harmony and an unsuper¬ 
vised and permanent peace could return to Bosnia was not in sight. 

Thus, on 24 November, when Task Force Eagle officially closed its 
base in Tuzla and was disestablished, European Union forces assumed 
responsibility for the Bosnia mission—now code-named Operation 
ALTHEA. At this juncture, military formations from Finland became the 
dominant peace enforcement organization in the former Task Force 
Eagle area of operations. A small U.S. contingent, however, remained 
primarily as a transition security force to ensure that NATO units could 
reenter rapidly if the need arose. 

Summary> and Analysis 

The peace enforcement operations— Joint Endeavor, Joint Guard, 
and Joint Forge —were atypical military campaigns. In the spectrum of 
armed conflict, political and diplomatic issues significantly influenced 
the Army’s actions and created an inverted role in which the absence 
of fighting was the measurement of success.The U.S. Army, trained to 
fight, used its resources to avoid conflict, to minimize confronta¬ 
tion, and to keep the peace. It did its job well. Bosnian casualties 
plummeted with the arrival of the Implementation Force, and 
IFOR/SFOR casualties were fewer than the respective number for 
either the civilian populace or the opposing paramilitary groups. Not 
one American soldier was killed by hostile fire. 

However, there were problems. Random acts of violence and 
vandalism continued throughout the peace enforcement opera¬ 
tions, albeit with a gradual decline in their frequency over the years. 
Although the Dayton Peace Accords called for the free movement 
and settlement of all ethnic groups and refugees within Bosnia, very 
few people were able to return to and resettle in their former homes 
or communities. With rare exceptions, the ethnic groups consistently 
and categorically thwarted the efforts of those who attempted to 
move from one ethnic-dominated enclave into another. The former 
warring factions may have been war-weary, but all three ethnic 
groups continued to stockpile munitions in anticipation of renewed 
hostilities. The secret arsenals, illegal weapons, and pervasive land 
mines kept IFOR/SFOR personnel constantly busy—and vigilant. The 


38 




The ever-present sign of danger 


peace was maintained, as one brigade commander ruefully observed, 
“partly because the sides want peace, but also by cajoling, coaching, 
and outright compelling peace”It was difficult work. 

In addition to the seemingly regular confiscations of weapons 
and munitions, Task Force Eagle continued to wrestle with the com¬ 
plex problems of identifying and removing the thousands of booby 
traps and land mines that littered the landscape. Thirty months after 
the first American tank crossed the Sava River the U.S.Army reported 
that 45,000 land mines had been removed (only 9,000 of them by 
the former warring factions), yet the database it compiled from 
various sources indicated that some 116,000 land mines were left. 
Nevertheless, with so many undocumented minefields, some either 
adjacent to or overlapping others, the Army estimated that only a frac¬ 
tion of the total number of land mines had been removed. In MND 
(N) alone, rough estimates suggested that the total number of land 
mines—documented and undocumented—actually hovered some¬ 
where between 300,000 and 350,000 individual explosive devices. 
In an uncharacteristic understatement, one Army after action report 
simply concluded: “Mine clearance, at the current rate, could go on 
indefinitely.” 

Yet the tasks were made manageable by the superlative training 
and preparation that preceded the deployment of successive Task 
Force Eagle units and soldiers. On several occasions veterans return- 


39 



ing from Bosnia commented on how demanding their predeploy¬ 
ment training had been and how closely it paralleled their actual 
experiences. A battalion commander claimed his personnel kept 
repeating, “This is just like ‘Mountain Eagle.’” Others thought that 
headquarters personnel back in Europe had been hiring Bosnians 
to replicate past training exercises because the scenarios were sim¬ 
ply too familiar. One platoon leader had high praise for the training 
he and his men received before their deployment, but whimsically 
added that trainers could not have anticipated everything, “such 
as an old lady falling into your barbed wire or a farmer who’s irate 
because your tank has torn up his road.” Perhaps the one signifi¬ 
cant shortcoming of the predeployment training was the inability 
to work closely with units that were later attached or that arrived from 
other major commands. This disconnect in integrated training was 
especially true for reserve-component elements that joined IFOR from 
stations in the United States. 

Unlike other campaigns in American military history, the Bosnia 
operations created an environment in which company-grade officers 
were directly involved every day in actions that could have strategic 
implications. Other IFOR participants were amazed that the U.S.Army 
would entrust captains, lieutenants, and noncommissioned officers 
with authority and responsibility in various scenarios that could per¬ 
manently alter the operational tempo and adversely affect the peace 
in Bosnia.The Army was aware of this great responsibility placed upon 
junior leaders and tailored its training accordingly. Citing as a typical 
example of both its successful training and the quality of its small-unit 
leaders, an after action report noted an episode following ethnic riots 
in the tense community of Brcko in August 1997. Observing fifteen 
buses leaving the city, a lieutenant—on his own initiative—followed 
with his small patrol. Soon, the buses stopped, and 400 people disem¬ 
barked. Many were inebriated and agitated, showing no signs of pur¬ 
pose or direction in their activity.The patrol halted near the group, and 
the lieutenant approached the crowd. Immediately, his translator ran 
away, and the crowd surrounded the young officer. His patrol readied 
itself for a confrontation. Calmly, the lieutenant asked if anyone in the 
crowd could speak English, and a man stepped forward. In the inter¬ 
view that followed, the lieutenant learned that the crowd was hungry 
and fatigued.WMe admitting that he could not feed or house the large 
group, he promised to speak to their civilian authorities to seek help. 
This attention pleased the crowd, which cleared a path for the lieuten¬ 
ant to rejoin his patrol.The lieutenant returned every hour through the 
night to provide updated information for the crowd. What could have 


40 


become an international incident became a typical and otherwise for¬ 
gotten episode in a NATO-sponsored peace enforcement operation. 

And—on the slightly humorous side—there was the story of 
the American patrol that inadvertently established its roadside 
checkpoint across the border in Serbia. The soldiers were kept 
busy all day leaving Serbian drivers puzzled until the local U.S. 
commander discovered the error and hustled the Americans back 
into Bosnia. 

Joint Endeavor, Joint Guard, and Joint Forge were career¬ 
defining experiences for many of the IFOR/SFOR soldiers. The 
multinational effort behind these peace enforcement operations 
represented NATO’s first out-of-sector deployment, deemed to be 
a success by all participants. Yet the tenuous cease-fire in Bosnia 
continues only because of the presence of the NATO-sponsored 
peace force. As one brigade commander affirmed, “When some¬ 
body sees U.S. Army soldiers’ boots on the ground, it shows a level 
of commitment that goes beyond any other level of commitment. 
People know that we re here to stay, that we’re here dedicated to a 
purpose and dedicated to an accomplishment of a mission. That is 
not lost on local civilians.” 

More importantly, peace enforcement in Bosnia may have been 
a harbinger of future military operations. In waging modern wars 
in the twenty-first century it no longer is enough to simply win 
the battles and go home. Given the multitude of ethnic diversity in 
many geographic areas around the world and the complex issues 
that engender conflicts among ethnic groups, the U.S. Army may 
be called upon to engage in more peace enforcement operations. 
And these require more time and patience. Like major surgery, the 
operation may be quick but the recovery extremely lengthy. 

No one challenges the assertion that the IFOR/SFOR presence 
in Bosnia-Herzegovina kept the peace in that troubled country, 
but a meaningful and lasting resolution may be much further 
away. Peace enforcement operations are not mechanical exer¬ 
cises that permit precise planning or exit strategies. As one U.S. 
Central Intelligence Agency analyst observed, “The flames had been 
damped down and covered over, but beneath the surface seismic 
faults and tensions remained.” With the stand-down of Task Force 
Eagle in November 2004, conditions today are certainly better than 
they were a decade earlier, but there are still people in Bosnia who 
nurture past grievances and who may seek to resolve them in the 
future. Until the ethnic groups are able to enforce their own peace, 
the outside stabilization forces must remain. 


41 


Further Readings 


The civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the events that fol¬ 
lowed certainly were the most extensively covered political-dip¬ 
lomatic-military issues in the late twentieth century Thousands of 
articles, hundreds of interviews, and dozens of books have present¬ 
ed not only the larger analysis of the Balkans and the rise and col¬ 
lapse of Yugoslavia but also the very specific history of Bosnia. It 
is not possible to list every available source, and neither is it even 
possible to cite all the better ones available to the general public. 
Nonetheless, the reader who wishes to pursue a broader and deep¬ 
er understanding of the issues that led to the peace enforcement 
operations Joint Endeavor, Joint Guard, and Joint Forge would do 
well to consider the following sources. 

Bennett, Christopher. Yugoslavia’s Bloody Collapse: Causes , 
Course and Consequences. Washington Square, N.Y.: New York 
University Press, 1995. 

Bildt, Carl. Peace Journey: The Struggle for Peace in Bosnia. 

London:Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998. 

Burg, Steven L., and Paul Shoup. The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: 
Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention. Armonk, N.Y.: 
M. E. Sharpe, 1999. 

Daalder, Ivo H. Getting to Dayton: The Making of America’s 
Bosnia Policy. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 
2000 . 

Holbrooke, Richard. To End a War. New York: Random House, 
1998. 

Malcolm, Noel. Bosnia: A Short History. Washington Square, N.Y.: 
New York University Press, 1994. 

Nation, R. Craig. War in the Balkans , 1991-2002. Carlisle, Pa.: U.S. 
Army War College, 2003. 

Silber, Laura, and Allan Little. Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation. New 
York: Penguin Books, 1995. 

Swain, Richard M. Neither War Nor Not War. Army Command 
in Europe During the Time of Peace Operations: Tasks 
Confronting USAREUR Commanders, 1994-2000. Carlisle, 
Pa.: U.S. Army War College, 2003. 


42 


A small archival collection of unclassified after action reports 
and related memoranda, as well as 300 oral history interviews and 
a lesser number of draft transcripts, are in the custody of the U.S. 
Army Center of Military History, Washington, D.C. A larger archival 
collection is located at the Army Heritage and Education Center, 
Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. In addition, more detailed mono¬ 
graphs about the U.S. Army’s peace enforcement operations in 
Bosnia and the Balkans region are being prepared by the Center 
of Military History, the U.S. Army Europe, and the U.S. Army Special 
Operations Command. 


43 


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